Merinthophobia

: fear of being tied or bound

Neji woke in a panicked spasm to a well lit room that he didn't know.

For a moment he couldn't understand what the hell he was looking at (walls, ceilings, lines and depth perception were escaping him). Then the smell of bandages and a plant salve stung his nose slightly. That bleached scent of sterilized things and his panic faded into mute realization. For a beautiful moment he couldn't feel a thing. Then a familiar, unmemorable face drifted into view near his right shoulder, reaching across him to adjust some IV drip or another. Kabuto finished adjusting the apparatus, inspecting a readout on one of the machines nearby.

"You're awake," he stated plainly.

Neji swallowed. "What…time?"

"Too late for breakfast at home if that's what you're wondering."

He would have liked to say that wasn't what he was thinking at all, but that was a lie and his pride wouldn't let him speak anyway. The Hyuuga swallowed and turned his face to the other wall, sorting with methodical panic through his boiling thoughts. He bit back his emotions because those were going to do him very little good – he suspected very much he might be doped on something, the walls kept swimmingly nicely – and he'd just have to do without them. Logic. Alright. Facts.

'I lost.'

You're a prisoner.

'I lost to him.'

You're screwed.

Logic sucked. Also, he was having trouble penning back his up and coming nervous breakdown (he blamed the drugs. Prescription pain-killers made him weird. As a result all Konoha anesthesiologists hated him). He squeezed his eyes shut, letting the unavoidable burn of panic rip through him like an electric current. Then he sank back on the table and somewhere inside something clicked on, or off, but clicked and the sixteen-year-old was smothered by the jounin. There was no panicking. There was no breaking. Calmly he took stock of the situation; letting his mind run through the categories in a neat, unemotional list.

All of his weapons were gone; every one of them but that was to be expected. His shoulder, he remembered, was supposed to have a charred hole punched through it – 'Tch, the same one? Again?' – but under the bandages it felt nicely whole. His lower back had been wrapped and his arms bandages from wrists to elbows. They smelled of burn salve, and felt stiff but no nerve damage as far as he could discern. 'The Current must be low voltage, else wise I would have been dead on the river.'

Overhead some device was beeping helpfully, assuring him that his heart was still beating normally and despite the considerable stiffness, his shoulder felt remarkably good for being run through. The only truly noticeable discomfort was the truly horrendous pain lashing across the delicate nerve in his eyeballs. In all honestly, if felt as though someone was currently in the mood to shoot him in the eyes with a high-powered staple-gun and he snapped his eyes shut again with a slight, strangled noise. The throb worsened with every moment of consciousness.

The machine spiked slightly.

"Hmm, the medication is wearing out," Kabuto remarked, tone observatory and cool. "Are you in any great pain?

'Yes!' "No," he gasped, struggling into a sitting position.

"Hmm, liar," concluded Kabuto. "I won't give you anything though. You need to be alert for this."

Neji fought a convulsion as another wave of pain hit him from the skull down. "For what?"

"You've been asleep most of two days," said Kabuto mildly, ignoring his question. "Sasuke-kun recovered some time last night…That last technique did more damage than he'd like to admit." He looked apologetic. "But I had to stop him from killing you with his Chidori Current. Much longer and your body would have been beyond repair."

"Why?" Neji kept his voice level. "What does he want with me?"

He wasn't talking about Sasuke anymore.

The Sound ninja shrugged rather lazily. "I'm sure I don't know."

He didn't bother hiding the lie. Neji blinked watery eyes open, grimacing at the moisture it triggered from abused tear glands and he wiped carefully at the running water, careful not to rub his eyes lest the pain drive him into unconsciousness. Kabuto was watching him a couple feet off, face a neutral mask of polite attention that the Hyuuga found unnerving. Kabuto struck a funny chord in him. Neji felt that in a room of a hundred, Kabuto was the kind to rub him wrong from fifty meters off. (At the Exams Lee had once called him 'That creepy guy in glasses' proving once and for all Lee did have some good instincts.)

"I don't know much about the Cage Seal," Kabuto was saying thoughtfully. "Obviously curse seals are a specialty of the Sound, but I'm curious to have a look at yours, see how it works." The med-nin was sorting through an array of hypodermic needles on a table nearby. "The best way would be cracking your skull open of course, but I can't be certain such an invasive technique won't activate the seal." He smiled ruefully. "We don't want you dead just yet, Neji-kun. That would be a waste after all the effort we put into getting you here."

Neji didn't say anything, just looked at the floor – or at least, directed his visible irises toward the floor – and pretended to have no comment. The doctor didn't seem to be awaiting an answer anyway. The young jounin felt goose-bumps trying to rise along his arms, an effect of proximity he supposed. Orochimaru's spy had a disturbing habit of saying awful things while his expression remained entirely pleasant. It was disconcerting for a person who more or less based all their social judgments on the tiny infinitesimal tics of the human subconscious, unconscious signals inherent in every human being.

It was like Kabuto didn't have them.

A shirt was tossed his way and Neji caught it reflexively.

"There's a bathroom on your left," the medic said affably. "Try to look a little presentable, Neji-kun. First impressions you know."

He left, locking the door behind him.

"Unbelievable," Neji whispered. He made future plans to blow the Yakushi's head off with Juuken and felt his mood improve for it.

Then he went in the bathroom and locked the door (because locks do lots of good when you're hostage in an enemy base) while he changed.

Hot water roared into the basin, filling the contrary silence of the Sound and steaming the mirror with misty fingers groping up. With reluctance he found himself staring hard at his reflection in the dim light of the tallow candles. Even after he rinsed the dusty blood from his face, he looked haggard and insubstantial in the gloom, his eyes paler than pale in his already ghostly pallor. Swallowing, he leaned forward to see again.

Were those hair-line fractures really there, etched into the solid secondary lens beneath the iris, like the cap on the child-safe lid? The plastic protection chipping away? Light glanced off the new, tell-tale imperfections in his inner iris.

Swallowing he leaned nearer to the mirror, gingerly activating the Byakugan.

The familiar tension at the back of his eyes came easy, the peculiar sliding sensation as the secondary lens under the first iris recoiled into the inner eye and allowed the chakra stimulated optical nerves to see freely. He blinked, hardly even aware of the motion but beyond the dull ache that had plagued him since waking; his eyes didn't protest the use. Encouraged, he allowed chakra to filter freely through the tenketsu behind his retina. Slowly, slowly at first, in small amounts, allowing color sensitive photoreceptors in his eyes to deactivated. He hadn't done such a slow activation since he was three, training himself to understand his blood-line-limit.

Normal eyes have two kinds of photoreceptor cells; cones and rods. Cones see color and light variations. Rods function in darkness and detect shape and outline with acute detail. He knew the Byakugan's heightened perception laid in the art of deactivating all the cone receptor cells in his eyes and relying solely on the sensitivity of rods. Chakra augmented this sensitivity until the photoreceptors become so highly sensitive they sought light and visual information even beyond solid objects. Developed correctly those rods began to seek light from sources typically invisible to the human retina…like that of chakra, for example. Byakugan could therefore function in any lighting because it does not rely on normal light to see.

By the age of seven, every Hyuuga child could see through solid objects and perceive a coil system. Soon the user was looking not merely through the pupil (still filmed over by the secondary lens) but through the back of their own head, through every other part of their eye, taking in light even through the skull. The distinction between standard and strong appeared here. Most Hyuuga could only see 270 degrees around them and behind them. Those strong in the Hyuuga blood and disciplined in their training could achieve 360 degrees of vision. The distinction between strength and genius appeared here.

There had been only five known Hyuuga in the history of the clan who could see and hit tenketsu.

Neji was one of them.

Neji grew up knowing these things, these biological facts about his own body that any ninja outside Konoha would kill to understand. But as he gazed into the mirror in that dusty bathroom, miles from the safety of the Hidden Leaf and the precious knowledge of his own clan, he found himself doubting his bloodline.

There were factures – fractures – in his secondary lens. He could see them even now: fine, hair-line chinks in the usual smoothness of the inner circle.

Neji was scared quite suddenly, staring at his broken eyes in the mirror. He felt weak and uncertain, like a little kid sitting in the dark trying to see without light all over again. But his father wasn't here to instruct him, there were no affectionate words of advice, no reassurance that, yes, this was perfectly normal and every Hyuuga your age goes through this.

There was just the ugly gnawing in the pit of his stomach.

He wanted to rub his knuckles into his eyes sockets until the fractures went away but he knew they wouldn't. He deactivated his Byakugan, but they were still there, visible even to the naked eye. Unnatural and strange. A Byakugan needs that secondary lens. It's this lens that prevents a Hyuuga from going blind when they activate hyper light-sensitive photoreceptors in broad daylight. Special pigments in the lens filter out the harsh color wavelengths of normal light and convert it to the needed blues and grays rods can perceive. The lens was a protective seal. To have the secondary lens damaged…

His fingers were shaking, his gut clenching and he wanted to scream suddenly for reasons that had nothing to do with Orochimaru.

'Don't think about it. Just don't. Don't –'

"Lesson number one: Emotion is strength."

He jerked his head down like someone bitten by a spider, shaking his head like he could dislodge it. 'No. No. Focus, don't think.' But Neji was trying to think, to clear his head of the fog in his brain, shake off the disbelief clutching him, not letting him come to terms with his failure. (But how was it a failure?) Hinata was safe. The secrets of the Byakugan would not be exploited. Mission accomplished. Why did that make him want to scream and punch his arm through a wall? Malicious churning in his stomach marked the revulsion, the sickness and delicate shudders of adrenaline, heat surging up behind his eyes with knee-jerk familiarly at the thoughts of her.

That sickly-sweet voice in his brain leaned forward and murmured murder, hissing hatred, breathing blood – "Lesson number two: Hatred and love are the two most powerful emotions." – and with a jerk and a gasp he shook it away, eyes clenching shut, dispersing the fire behind his cornea. Desperately he grabbed for better memories. He needed better memories, he needed to believe he'd done this for a reason or he would go mad.

He clung to Hinata's humanity – he didn't trust his own – her anxious need to express to him how much she cared (stammering, nervous and blushing), her rice ball recipe, the gentle caution as she tied his hair: Simple things to keep him sane. He cradled the memory of Hanabi's voice, how she smelled (soap and coconut flakes) when he passed her and the desperate, distant affection he'd felt, the fierce need to defend her. He recalled her giving in for the first time when he said 'no' to one of her requests, stepping down her bred superiority for once in her life, her willingness to try.

His cousins were his only quavering life-line. If he didn't believe that he loved them, that he wanted to see them again then he'd asphyxiate in the stale darkness of this place.

Neji slammed his hand against the wall beside his reflection.

'I will not do what he wants!'

With a wrench he pulled out of his darkness and pulled on the shirt Kabuto had left for him, plain white and a purple rope sash (Neji pointedly threw it in the trash because, stylish or not, he could recognize a stupid piece of wardrobe when it crossed him). There was gauze on the counter in the adjoining room and Neji deftly wrapped his forehead in it, hiding the Cage Seal. This was business, the usual hostage situation, just another day at the metaphysical office. It wasn't like his job description hadn't come with the clause: May or may not be captured, tortured and dissected for the sake of enemy-nin science. Please sign on lines 3, 4 and 18.

Kabuto returned as he finished tying off the bandages and blinked at the fully dressed Hyuuga, as if he hadn't expected to find him here at all, much less fully dressed. He pursed his lips a moment. This suggested to Neji that his idea of 'presentable' and Kabuto's did not quite align, but he said nothing to that affect.

"Well, then," he said, holding the door ajar. "Let's go, Hyuuga-san."

They did that.

-break-

The halls were freezing.

Within minutes, Neji's jaw was locked up to prevent his teeth from chattering. Kabuto was either immune to the cold or, in a show of magnificent play-acting, ignoring it outright. His breath hung in the air as clearly as the teenager's own. Neji could make out distinctly the prickle of goosebumps down the other ninja's arms, the slight jump in his jaw where the occasional jitter of teeth threatened to give him away. Torches lined the walls; burnt out stubs but no one had gone about to replace them yet, letting the burned black patch remain as evidence of the former heat. Neji was starting to wish he had something heavier than the thin white shirt. Not rubbing his arms was becoming an effort of will.

Kabuto turned off without warning into an open archway and Neji followed him.

Warm air shocked heat back into his cheeks, kneading the chill from his skin as quickly as it had seeped in and Neji found himself facing a kind of sunken den. The room smelled of life, of people and activity; the phantom traces of previous owners still hanging like ghosts after the fact. Someone had made an attempt at decoration with a woven throw rug and erratic selection of five degenerating armchairs, scattered in a hodge-podge design about the room. A small television set took stage on what looked like a pile of old magazines and a foot rest with one leg missing. Another someone had inserted a flipped rice bowl to equalize the podium.

The jounin tracked the warmth to the left where Kabuto had propped an ancient looking oven open with a wooden spoon. He currently had one foot set against the counter next to the mouth of the giant baking appliance, his back braced against the immaculate kitchen island across from it. There was a set of barstools, some broken and toppled, arranged near the counter. He could make out the shape of several fist-sized holes in the wall and a hanging target board riddled with kunai. The room whispered of some kind of unity here, but only thinly.

"The lower atriums don't get warm until later in the day," Kabuto said, not looking at Neji. He was balancing a clipboard on his knee, writing with slow, unhurried pen-strokes. "Usually I wouldn't worry, but the medication from last night might have knocked you out too long. Then you'd never wake up. What a shame that would be."

Neji didn't move from the door, didn't venture another step over the already violated threshold. He lifted his chin just slightly instead, trying to gauge his guide without looking like that was what he was doing. He didn't believe Kabuto had woken him early to give him some time to get warm by the oven and he didn't believe that Kabuto really thought he'd freeze in his sleep. The little fact about the furnaces sounded about right, though. He still couldn't feel his fingers.

"Why is it so cold?" Neji asked quietly.

Kabuto spared him a cursory kind of glance. "Only the upper levels keep the fires stroked around the clock. The fires go out around midnight so it gets cold by the early morning. The servants don't kindle them again until eight."

"Orochimaru's rooms are in the upper levels." Neji left off the question mark pointedly.

"Precisely."

He played with the idea of mentioning cold-bloodedness in relation to reptiles, but the notion was curbed by a sudden lurching growl from his stomach. He swallowed, absurdly embarrassed and wondered pragmatically if Kabuto brought him here as some kind of visual taunt. 'I have access to food, but you're not getting any' kind of thing. But that seemed too low-class for him somehow. If the med-nin was going to mess with him, he would do it more subtly.

He wasn't sure why he figured that.

But sure enough, Kabuto spared him another look, lower lip thinning as if he were chewing it slightly in thought, considering him. He could see lazy wheels turning, contemplating the hungry teenaged Leaf-ninja, what to do with such a dilemma. Neji didn't let on what he thought about this silent appraisal and moved into the room instead, letting the heavy warmth steal across his shoulders in comforting waves. He took a seat at the stool at the corner of the bar and folded his arms on the countertop.

"So what's my position here exactly?" Neji asked.

Kabuto answered, "You're a prisoner of war for now."

Neji mulled that over.

The medic lifted his head suddenly as if to see what he thought of this. "It's only temporary," he assured the young Hyuuga. "I expect you'll be a full fledged Sound shinobi by the end of next month."

The sweet aftertaste of sarcasm in his words made Neji's throat clench, as if swallowing something sour. In the back of his mind his brain was already reiterating that statement, incredulous, disbelieving. He was lying of course. Not even Orochimaru would dare to dream he could force loyalty on someone, certainly not in a few months' time, but Kabuto's purpose for saying such a lie concerned him more than some.

A moment passed.

"Is it usual for the Sound to treat prisoners this way?"

"No. I said it before: you should consider yourself a guest, an exception. Not necessarily a good thing, you know. The nail that sticks up…" Kabuto trailed off helpfully, smiling.

Neji thumbed his sleeve, eyes never leaving the figure of the pale-haired shinobi just feet across from him. Yakushi Kabuto didn't seem to mind the scrutiny, he just went right on scribing his notes, all of which Neji immediately realized was in some kind of syntax code. Neji's sharp eyes picked out each and every meaningless character. There was a stack of papers at the far end of the table, charts and letters spread out with a kind of organized abandon. He matched the handwriting to the medic's. He ran his hand idly through his loose hair, pushing it off his forehead. The rough cloth wraps tickled his fingertips

"So you're forcing me into cooperating with the Sound's objectives?" Neji folded his arms, lowering his head slightly. "That I understand. But want makes you think you can make me a true member of the Sound?"

Kabuto only shrugged one shoulder. "You're just that type of shinobi, Neji-kun. You're a survivor and you're smart. So you won't do something stupid like try and resist what's so obviously out of your hands."

Neji narrowed his eyes slightly.

"One way or another you'll do as we require." Kabuto looked at him. "If not, it's going to be hard cutting your eyes out of your skull."

He issued the brutal threat with such casual ease Neji would have mistaken it for something kind if he'd only registered the inflection. The Hyuuga had to admire his methods of intimidation. It was better than anything he could have pulled off even after two years of work as a jounin. A digital clock on the microwave over the far counter said 5:55 AM. Was that really the time or was Kabuto messing with him? Did someone even think that far ahead? And what good is messing with a captive's sense of time? 'Or –' Neji grimaced '– am I finally reaching critical mass and cracking?' It was an issue any spy dealt with. Judging where and when their good sense and field experience bled over into neurosis and paranoia.

Neji slid off the stool to circle the counter. He paused on the opposite side of the stove. The Yakushi didn't seem bothered by Neji's movement so the jounin reached experimentally into a partially open cabinet. When the medic didn't immediately say something, Neji elbowed it open and began to methodically rifle through the various boxes and bottles. As he sorted, he could almost see where someone had gone shopping with something like a reasonable shopping list, then given up and just packed the shelves with random culinary ambitions.

Neji was half-way through reading a number of expiration dates on a box of Mist Country spices when Kabuto finally looked up. "If you're eating keep it light," he said neutrally. "Or you'll throw it up." Then he went back to his scribbles.

There was a trace of hostility in those words. He found a protein bar with an acceptable expiration date and struggled not to look as starved as he was finishing it off. Then he washed an apple and crunched his way through that, trying to decide whether or not the waxy taste was normal in an apple or if he was being insidiously poisoned. Kabuto wasn't saying anything. Neji counted out five stools about the kitchenette, implying the maximum occupancy that struck a strange chord in his memory, vibrating deep in his head, nudging a forgotten recollection. He chewed slowly, swallowing after a moment, mouth dry.

He recalled it now. They'd called themselves the Sound Five.

"Does this room belong to you?" Neji asked finally, coldly.

"In a fashion," he replied, glancing up at him through the silver thread of his bangs. He slid his glasses a little higher on his nose. "Why do you ask, Neji-kun?"

"It seems a little big for one."

The medic quirked his head just slightly, like the sparrows in his bedroom window, a curious little jilt to the left and he put the clipboard down on a pile of manila envelopes. A glance told Neji they were dossiers for chuunin, far too many to read through without looking suspicious. Kabuto made a show of warming his hands over the open range. "This room is for elite jounin only," the young man said blandly. His glasses caught the light until the lenses became twin mirrors, bright and inhuman. "It's something like the steak house back in Konoha actually. When the jounin have their get-togethers every other week or so. In the Sound, the elite come here."

Neji glanced down at the pock-marked counter, stabbed methodically with what looked like a blunt kunai. 5:59 AM. He ran a finger into a single divot.

"Kidomaru did that," Kabuto said suddenly.

Neji resisted the instinct to tear his fingers away from the battered tabletop. He kept his voice bored. "Really?"

"Jirobou was the cook around here. When Kidomaru got impatient waiting for him he'd sit there and stab the table." Kabuto furled and unfurled his fingers; inspecting them in the same manner Tenten might inspect her nails, but without any of the girlish motivations. He had an air of laziness about him almost, but not quite equal to that of Shikamaru. Neji didn't like the fact he kept drawing parallels between his fellow Leaf-nin and the strange medic. He decided he should really stop it.

Neji opened his mouth to ask –

"Kabuto."

The named Sound-nin stiffened ever so slightly, eyes shifting with more than lazy quickness to the doorway. Neji didn't look, through his peripheral he could make out the dim outline of another person stood in the entry, one arm propped against the frame, fingers trailing the edges of two ebon-dark eyes. An upward prickle of cold kissed its way up the curve of his spine and spread across the back of his neck into his scalp. The apple and protein bar were suddenly crawling their way back up his throat.

'Oh for the love of…'

Sasuke leveled a cool look their way, irises flashing red wheels.

"You're doing a poor job," he said at length, "hiding that Hyuuga from me."